Before The Trigger Was Pulled
by cherii tomato
Summary: He would do anything for the girl he loved so much, anything at all. Because that was just how much he loved her.


**Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. Blah. blah. not mine.**

* * *

Before the Trigger was Pulled

by

cherii tomato

* * *

"_Higher!"_

The eyelids of Natsume Hyuuga snapped open immediately. His forehead was covered in sweat and his breath was coming in short rasps. For three times he blinked as his eyesight focused onto the ceiling above him. Natsume didn't take notice of the fact on how hard he was gripping onto the bed sheets.

"_Natsume, go higher!"_

His eyes and fingers clenched shut when he heard the ringing of her words in her ears. Turning his head to one side, he saw that it was fifty-minutes to five. In the morning. Reluctantly, he sat up from his bed and buried his face in his hands. For the umpteenth in the week, he was haunted by that dream, that piece of memory again.

_Nineteen-year-old __Natsume watched as Mikan was flung into the skies, her infectious laughter filling the air. He couldn't help but grin like the love drunk idiot he was. As Mikan descended back onto earth, before her feet could touch the ground, Natsume gave her another hard push and she took off again._

"_This is__ fun!" She screamed, dragging the vowels longer than they should be. She came back down and Natsume pushed, not caring how breathless he was. He would do anything for the girl he loved so much, anything at all. This continued for another twenty minutes, with Natsume pushing as hard as he could, Mikan laughing and swinging high up into the air before coming back down before the whole process would repeat again._

_Only when Natsume felt his muscles were begging for mercy and that he couldn't put up with it any longer, he staggered to the empty swing beside Mikan before flopping his butt onto the seat. Natsume tried to catch his breath while Mikan gradually slowed to a stop._

"_That was fun!" Still sitting on the swing, Mikan began to slowly rock the seat. Unconsciously, Natsume did the same thing. Gently, he kicked his feet off the ground, swinging himself lightly._

"_No. That was tiring." He corrected, breathless. "Very tiring."_

Wearing only a pair of boxers, Natsume got out from his bed, his head throbbing in pain from the lack of sleep. It was only two hours ago since he fell asleep. He knew that his insomnia was getting worse as the day goes by. If this keeps up, he would probably be completely worn out, his organs will fail him and he'll probably die.

Not that he didn't want to die. That was his greatest wish, after all.

His legs felt like jelly as he took a step forward, only to stumble and fall, almost knocking over his bottle of scotch. Natsume grabbed onto it, hugging the cold bottle to his chest, like it was the most important thing in the world to him. With trembling fingers, he unscrewed the cap and took a long swig from it, feeling the liquid travel down his throat. Every spot it touched, Natsume could feel it burn. Every single corner it licked, Natsume could feel the pain.

But it was not enough to overcome the pain in his chest.

Natsume hugged the bottle to his chest again and he slumped onto the floor. His crimson eyes were void of any emotions as he watched the memory of him and Mikan from a few years ago played before his eyes.

_They were quiet for a moment, with only the sound of leaves rustling as the playful wind __chased them around. Mikan's hair was also joining in the game with the wind. Her hair that was tied into a messy bun was flowing softly, falling perfectly onto her face. Natsume couldn't help but be mesmerized at the sight._

_She was so beautiful. Natsume had to hold himself back from kissing her right then, right there. _

"_Natsume, can I ask you something?"_

_The lad kept quiet, knowing that his girlfriend would ask no matter what he answered._

"_Who do you think will go first? Me, or you?"_

_Natsume looked at his girlfriend quizzically. His thick eyebrows were scrunched together. "Go?"_

_Mikan was avoiding eye contact from him as she stared at her feet, at a tree, at the sky, at the ground, anywhere but him. "You know, as in,_ go_. Leave. The world, I mean. As in, _die_."_

_Silence engulfed them afterwards. Mikan was waiting for Natsume's answer as his brain tried to process her question. _

"_That's an easy question," he replied with a small shrug. "You would."_

_Mikan stared at his boyfriend with her fallen jaw, widened eyes, wondering if she had heard him correctly._

_He smirked that boyish grin of his Mikan had loved so much. __"If you do that any longer, it might stay that way forever." Natsume callously commented._

"_You want me to die first? WHAT KIND OF HEARTLESS BOYFRIEND ARE YOU?" Mikan began to slap him wildly which was hard to fend up by the lad._

"_Hey, hey, hey! Watch it! You wouldn't want you boyfriend's face to get ruined, do you?"_

_Mikan stopped and huffed loudly. "Oh. I wouldn't care because my so-called boyfriend wants me dead!"_

"_Jesus, woman. Would you just calm down!" With his trained reflexes, Natsume had successfully caged her hands in his large ones before they could assault him any further_.

Natsume's fists were trembling and he buried them into his hair. Although he was trying his best to hold them back, the tears flowed down his cheeks, along with the sweat.

"Why are you doing this to me, Mikan?" He mumbled in a shaky voice. "Why are you doing this to me?"

With the bottle of scotch still in his arms, Natsume got up from the floor and shuffled back to his bed, all the while mumbling Mikan's name over and over again.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way. It was never supposed to be my way." Once he reached to the edge of his bed, Natsume fell onto it and he cried into his pillow.

"_Because, you idiot, if I were to die first, I know you will cry. And then you'll be ugly." Natsume said in a low breath. "I don't want to see you cry, I never want to see you cry. Especially not for me."_

_Unknowingly, Natsume had released Mikan's hands and she was holding one up to cover her mouth, eye flooded with tears. "Natsume,"_

His name that was spoken in her voice reverberated in his mind. He lifted his head off his pillow and looked around the room, shielded in darkness. Using a device that was lodged into his bed frame, Natsume pressed a button and slowly, the curtains in his room parted.

It was five thirty and right before him, right in front of Natsume, was the breathtaking sight of the sun rising from the horizon of the sea.

"It wasn't supposed to be my way."

"_You know what Natsume," Mikan began after a long period of silence. "I'm not going to leave first. If we are to leave, we'll go together._

"_It will be when we are old and all wrinkled, but still madly in love. It will be at our house, on the veranda, and we'll be sitting on rocking chairs, and we'll be holding hands, like how we are now." The brunette looked at their hands and smiled. Hers was protected by Natsume's large ones. "And it will be in the evening, during sunset._

"_We'll be smiling, watching at the sun set. Then just seconds before we leave, I'll look to you, you'll look at me, then we'll both smile at each other fondly. Then I'll say, 'We've lead a good life, haven't we?' then you nod your head because you're so laconic. Then I'll go, 'Good night, my love. I love you.' And you'll reply, 'Good night, my love. I love you too.' Then we'll turn our heads back to the sunset, the moment it disappears, we'll close our eyes simultaneously and drift away, together. Just like that." Natsume looked at Mikan with an aching in his heart. Without even a second thought, he leaned over to kiss her, right on the lips. _

_Because he was just so madly and deeply in love with her._

Beside Natsume's bed, was a bedside table. Fixed to the bedside table, was a drawer. Lying innocently inside the drawer was a handgun. One that Natsume got a while ago for protection. He reached his hand over and yanked over the drawer before taking out the gun. Natsume had never gotten the chance to use it so it still looked as good as new.

Perhaps the day for it to be used the first time has come.

And it will probably be the last.

Natsume examined it carefully. The gun was unloaded so he released the magazine and loaded with bullets till it was full. When he put it back on, it felt awfully heavy in his hand.

Still, for once in three years, Natsume smiled. Because he knew that he was going to see Mikan again.

How he ached to see her again.

"Natsume,"

Natsume jumped when he heard his name being called. It was her voice. He turned around and sitting right next to him was her. Was the girl he fell in love with, was his first love and was the girl who died two years ago.

"Mikan."

She was just the way he wanted to remember her being. The Mikan in front of him was wearing a printed t-shirt, a pair of washed jeans and a white hand-knitted cardigan that was knitted by her. It was the Mikan when they were nineteen, when they were on that swing. Back when the nightmare was still an unheard tale.

Back when leukemia was something heard from a movie or read from a story. Stories they had both always thought was something that could never happen to them. Little did they know.

"_I have leukemia."_

_Hearing her words, Natsume could only stare and blink at the wall. He imagined Mikan in her house, her ear to her phone. Her face was probably covered in tears. In his mind, for the first time, Natsume suddenly realized the changes that were taking over her body. Mikan had been losing weight, even though she was already skinny enough and occasionally, Natsume would see an ugly bruise or two on her body which he kept quiet about._

_He realized that he was a horribly inattentive boyfriend._

"_Oh shit. Oh shit. What's next?" It was silly question but Natsume didn't know what else to say._

"_What's next? Chemo, perhaps? I'll be going in and out the hospital a lot." There was a pause. "The doctor told me that I'm not going to live through this. So, death."_

Death. The ending to every living thing's life. Something Mikan experienced when she was only twenty years old.

Natsume's mouth went dry as he looked at Mikan, sitting on the edge of his bed and swinging her legs. Her eyes were they exact way they used to be, filled with life. "Why are you here?" Mikan smiled coyly and leaned over till her face was inches from Natsume's.

"Because I told you. We leave together. Although we are still young and beautiful, and this is no veranda, and we're on a bed instead of a rocking chair," Mikan reached out a hand and gripped onto Natsume's hand tightly. Her hand felt cold but she felt real. Natsume took a sharp intake of breath. "But we're holding hands, aren't we? And I guess a sunrise is pretty much the same thing as a sunset, right?"

Natsume nodded his head and grinned. There was nothing else in the world he wanted because his most precious thing was already sitting right beside him. Eyes still trained onto the brunette, Natsume raised the gun to his head and the safety latch was already unlocked. The muzzle felt cold against his temple.

"We've lead a good life, haven't we?" Mikan gazed at him fondly. Natsume's grin widened as he nodded his head as planned.

"Good night, my love. I love you."

"Good night, my love. I love you too." His whisper was as soft as a feather.

With that, they both turned their heads to face the sunrise. Mikan closed her eyes and so did Natsume.

And then the trigger was pulled.

**_To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die._**

* * *

If you don't know, the last sentence is a part of the lyrics from The Smiths' 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out'.

I find endings like these, where a gun is fired and then the story ends, blacks out, jsut liek that, to be hauntingly beautiful, don't you?

Belle. x


End file.
